


Fallen

by OtherCat



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Angst, Dark, Drama, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-01-01
Updated: 2004-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-07 15:22:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtherCat/pseuds/OtherCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Angel takes out the garbage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fallen

She left him on the floor like a broken doll. A broken blow up doll, or maybe deflated was a better word--he didn't want to examine that metaphor too closely.

His vision blurred out after a few feet from his unswollen eye, and he didn't even want to try and drag himself over to his bed, let alone try to get in it. He hurt, but it had to be worth it, because she was worth it, worth everything. Worth anything.

He heard the crypt door opening, and footsteps. He knew these footsteps, knew the great looming shape that stood over him. Remembered being in this exact position before, time and again, when the great looming shape had been the cause of the damage. Spike laughed, or tried to. It bubbled wetly, scraping its way up a throat raw from screaming. He wanted to say something witty and snide, but the words wouldn't come.

"Spike," quiet voice, quieter than he expected, coming from Angel. The looming shape loomed closer, until he could make out a face. Brown eyes intent, clinical, cataloging his injuries. Taking it all in, and not giving any of it back. "I'm getting you out of here." Quiet voice, not saying anything of what he was thinking, what he was feeling. What he knew. What he had to know because the evidence was plain for anyone with a nose or a pair of eyes that actually worked to see.

"No," Spike said, or tried to, what came out was a wheeze that vaguely sounded like a protest. Not that it mattered, Angel lifted him up like he didn't weigh anything at all, the bastard, and carried him out of the crypt and to the car. Angel set him belly down over the hood for a moment, and cuffed his hands behind his back. Spike struggled for a moment, then went limp when he was picked up by neck and arm, and shoved into the back seat.

Angel walked back to the crypt. Spike could hear the sounds of things breaking in the distance. Angel came back grimly amused, carrying a trash bag. "I wrote your 'Dear Jane' letter, and got some of your clothes," he said as he slid into the driver seat, set the trashbag on the floorboard. "I also poured about three bottles of cheap whiskey over everything for dramatic effect."

"Gonna leave me in the desert?" Spike croaked when they passed the "You are leaving Sunnydale sign.

"If I wanted you dead, I'd've left a suicide note, not a 'Dear Jane'."

"Why don't you then?"

Silence.

Bastard.

Angel wouldn't answer any of his other questions or comments. At the angle Spike was lying at, he could see the tension in Angel's jaw muscles that told him that some of his comments were hitting their mark though, so that was something.

In another time, and another place, Spike would have known all ready how far he could push, what he needed to say. Angelus, to use a particularly tired metaphor, had been like an open book. A certain look, a certain inflection in his voice, and Spike knew immediately what he needed to do, what he needed to be. Now though, he was uncertain of his role, and the language had shifted with the years, into a new dialect, and him without a dictionary.

Angel's new Fortress of Solitude was an old hotel. Spike thought it was a lot like Angel. Brooding, imposing, and increasingly unstable toward the top. Angel dragged Spike out of the car, and set him on his feet. "Can you walk?" Angel asked, holding him upright. For a moment, except for the hair, it might have been Angelus asking the question of his younger self, after a fight in some pub. After trying to convince Angelus, or maybe himself, that he wasn't anything like the human William. Rough, exasperated "why the hell do I bother with you, anyway?" sort of voice.

Spike nodded, and tried to pull away from Angel, succeeding only in tripping over his own feet. Angel caught him, made an exasperated noise, and half carried, half dragged him into the hotel, and sat him down on a couch. "Love what you've done with the place," Spike muttered, looking around the lobby, at the cobbled together repairs.

"It's a fixer-upper," Angel said. He idly swung the trash bag full of Spike's clothes, a non-expression on his face as he stared at Spike. Stared through him, maybe. Eyes like needles. Spike remembered that Dru had said that Angel's eyes had been like needles whe he'd set herself and Darla on fire.

Spike stared back, trying for defiance, and falling short of the mark. "Did you have something in mind? Or were you just going stare at me until I died of boredom?"

"I'm trying to figure out," Angel said. "What the hell you thought you were doing."

"Doesn't matter now, does it?" Spike asked, after a few more minutes of staring.

"Well, maybe I think it does." Closer now, and more looming. An attempt at intimidating closeness which had almost never worked, and wasn't working now.

Spike tilted his head back. The voice was wrong, the anger was almost right. "I was there for her. Where were you?" Smirking made his face hurt, but the smile widened when Angel dropped the bag, hands curling into fists. "Too busy playing hero in the big city?"

"Don't push me Spike." Low, even voice. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't I then? I was there I saw her fall...and you weren't there."

So quick and so easy, Angel was there, hand around his throat, gripping him tight. Angel's face inches from his own, ridged and enraged. "You think that didn't tear me apart? I loved her, and I couldn't save her any more than you could." Angel picked him up then, and threw him back against the couch, jarring his arms and shoulders painfully. White sheet of pain across his eyes then, like lightning.

Spike slid off the couch and onto the floor, dazed. "At least I was there," he mumbled, and struggled to rise. He got as far as his knees when Angel grabbed him by the neck again, and pressed him down further, grasping his cuffed wrists.

"You think being there gave you the right to crawl into her bed?" Angel asked harshly, and yanked Spike's wrists upward.

Spike grunted in pain. "She crawled into my bed often enough. Jealous?" He shot back.

"That you took advantage of Buffy? Not really."

"Didn't," Spike said. "Gave her what she wanted...what she needed." He squirmed under the weight of Angel's hands, felt their grip tighten, almost felt the bruises forming.

"You were just convenient." Angel's mouth was almost brushing his throat, too close, and too far away. Spike hated himself for the sudden desire to turn his head, to offer his neck to Angelus, to Angel. He fought the urge, and hated Angel for making him feel it. "She doesn't love you, she's never going to love you." Angel's voice was a lazy murmur against his skin, full of Angelus' malice and contempt.

"I love her. I love her." He clung to the thought, to the words. He needed her, wanted her...hated that she wouldn't have him...hated Angel for being there first, the way he always seemed to be first.

"She doesn't love you." Angel repeated. "And you're staying as far away from her as I can manage."

"Have to kill me then."

"No, I just have to keep you." The blow fell like a sledgehammer. There was a second sheet of lightning, and then darkness.

* * *

"Why is he here?" Outraged female voice.

"I brought him."

"Why?!" Sputtering. "He's a killer, he stuck pokers in your gut, and you brought him here?!"

"Cordy's right, man...if he's such a bad-ass, why not just stake him?" Male voice.

"Because I said I wouldn't, and that's all I'm going to say on it." Flat even voice, not giving anything away.

Spike, waking up, wondered who Angel had given his word too. Couldn't have been Buffy, if Angel had gone to the trouble of making it look like he'd left. Spike shifted on the mattress, and felt the manacles on his wrists, heard them clink. The room was bare, except for the mattress, and the chains were bolted to the floor.

Spike waited, watching a line of light from between the curtains move along the floor. He could hear them talking, but not all of what they were saying, arguing among themselves, about Angel, about him, and someone named Connor.

The line of light was halfway across the room when Angel reappeared, mug of blood in his hands. Spike stared at Angel, and tried to read his mind. "You going to keep me chained up for long?"

Angel set the cup down on the floor, expression neutral. "That depends, are you going to run back to Sunnydale if I let you go?"

"What do you think?" Spike growled.

"Well, there's your answer," Angel said, and left the room, shutting and locking the door behind him.

Spike ignored the blood that had been left, his thoughts spinning in endless circles, with Buffy at the center.

In his head, she was still falling.

Always falling, and he could never save her, she just slipped through his arms like a ghost. Standing right in front of her, and she was a million miles away. Inside her, and he didn't even exist. Not real, she'd whisper in his ear, nothing was real, not him, not her. Passion with no heat, pain with no pleasure, no harm and no foul--she couldn't feel, and he couldn't hurt any more than the robot he'd had made could. Not real.

You need me, he'd say. You need me to make you feel, you turn to me because your friends would never understand.

You don't understand, she'd say. You weren't there. They didn't know, and you never will, because you don't have a soul. You are --nothing . You can only pretend to feel, only pretend to exist. Nothing.

Always falling.


End file.
